1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic commerce for electronic products. In particular, the present invention relates to technology that enables the electronic management and reassignment of licenses for electronic products installed on computers connected through a communications network.
2. Background Information
The growth in sales of packaged software has increased tremendously over the last few years. An industry trade group reports that the worldwide market for packaged software products for all platforms topped $154 billion dollars in 1999 alone, a 14.5% increase from the market in 1998. (IDC Puts the Worldwide Packaged Software Market at $154 Billion in 1999, International Data Corporation, Jan. 25, 2000, Press Release). The United States accounts for approximately 70% of this worldwide market, of which $24 billion dollars represents business software installed on personal computer platforms.
Business corporations and other enterprises are one of the largest consumers of packaged software as well as numerous other types of electronic products, including electronic databases, books, digital video, electronic works of art, electronic graphics, electronic magazines and brochures, and digital audio creations and recordings. As a result of their tremendous investment in packaged software and other types of electronic products, businesses view them as valuable electronic assets rather than consumable office products. In an effort to get the most value from their initial investment in electronic assets, corporate managers are placing more emphasis on the need to control electronic assets in much the same way as they control other corporate assets, through reuse and redeployment within the corporation whenever and wherever possible.
The notion of promoting sharing and reuse of software and other electronic products is known in the art. There are a number of widely available shareware libraries that make software and other electronic products freely available over the Internet for downloads and use. For example, the United States Small Business Administration hosts a shareware website that acts as a clearinghouse of freely available software to small business entrepreneurs. In 1995, the Software Engineering Institute of Electrical Engineers developed a standard for interoperating reuse libraries to help the engineering community share reusable software (IEEE Std 151420.1-1995, IEEE Standard for Information Technology-Software Reuse-Data Model for Reuse Library Interoperability: Basic Interoperability Data Model (BIDM), Approved, Dec. 12, 1995). An example of such a software reuse library is Netlib. The Netlib repository contains freely available software, as well as other electronic documents and databases of interest to the numerical, scientific computing, and other communities.
One of the many limitations of the prior art shareware and software reuse libraries, however, is the lack of controlled sharing and reuse of electronic assets, so as to insure compliance with the electronic product's licensing restrictions, if any. As a result, users of prior art shareware and reuse libraries can potentially create an unlimited number of unauthorized copies of the software or other electronic product. A related limitation is the lack of monitoring capability so as to identify and track the use of the electronic product from one user to the next. Moreover, shareware and reuse libraries are by their nature open to all users, and therefore lack the ability to restrict or partially restrict access to certain electronic assets based on the user's association with a particular class or group of users.
Since prior art shareware and electronic product reuse libraries do not insure license compliance, they also do not take advantage of recent advances in the technology for licensing software and other electronic products, including the use of electronic licensing schemes that electronically manage and distribute licenses for software and other electronic products installed on remote computers. Moreover, prior art shareware and reuse libraries do not even contain licensing data, but rather are content libraries that contain the actual software or other electronic content for purposes of electronic distribution over the Internet or other network. However, it is the licensing data that is necessary for businesses to monitor and control the authorized redeployment of electronic assets on remote computers; the content distribution and installation can be handled by existing distribution mechanisms. By not tracking the active users of a particular electronic asset, business administrators lose valuable opportunities for controlling the cost of electronic assets by recapturing unused assets for redeployment to other departments or users in the corporate computer enterprise that need the same product. Accordingly, a new approach for providing a reusable electronic asset library that facilitates the electronic management and reassignment of licenses is desirable, not only to to enable business administrators to control costs and get the most out of their electronic assets, but to do so in a way that insures license compliance. The integration of reuse libraries with electronic licensing technology in a user-friendly way presents a unique set of challenges, requiring a new and novel solution.